Monday, September 27, 2010

Against my better judgment ...

Dr Platypus is up to something, which will come as no surprise to those who know him. He's suggested summarizing each book of the Bible as haiku, and has started us off with a few of the epistles of the New Testament. Another fellow has joined in with the Pentateuch.

I'll confess freely: my aesthetics are offended. (Tongue in cheek, for those who don't know me well!) Haiku are clearly meant for short topics that can be sketched in three clear artists' lines. While Jude may qualify for that kind of treatment, it's a breech of genre to try to bonzai the Psalms until they become a single haiku. (Now, 150 haiku, possibly ... so long as Psalm 119 gets to be 5 haiku, each beginning h-a-i-k-u ... or if the whole book becomes an acrostic haiku a-l-l-e-l-u-i-a; but I'm losing my own thread here.) Exodus is clearly an epic (no disrespect intended to the fellow who did the Torah, and did a nicer job than I thought possible with it), and Song of Songs ... well, if anything in the Bible is a limerick, that's the one. So, against my better judgment:

Song of Songs
There once was a king and his lover
Who joyfully went under cover
With lilies and myrrh
We're quick to aver:
Wonder is great to discover

2 comments:

Weekend Fisher said...

Thank you. It was a fun thought you had.

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF

Unknown said...

Delightful!

Blessings,
Joe & Anne